Occasionally, I will see someone whose height catches my eye. It doesn’t happen very often though, because I live with tall people. So, if someone appears tall to me, that means they are extraordinarily giant like.

At 6’4”, hubby is a full foot taller than I am. For years, he was the tallest in the family until our son bypassed him, topping out at 6’6”. Our daughter tried to catch up, but stopped growing at just over six foot. None of them play basketball, but thank you for asking.

There are advantages and disadvantages to living with tall people. When we remodeled the bathroom, the shower head was placed nearly two feet above my head so hubby no longer has to duck under the water. This means that by the time the water gets to me, a good portion of the pressure has diminished and trickles down like a light rain.

On the other hand, he can easily see the cobwebs that appear in the corners of the bathroom ceiling, and only has to swipe them with a towel to make them disappear. Cleaning cobwebs takes up the better part of a morning when I do it on my own; dragging a ladder from room to room, climbing up and down.

Having tall children makes life easier in some respects. Granted, we have to special order blue jeans for my daughter in order to fit her 36” inseam, but her height comes in rather handy in the kitchen when I need to reach any item placed above the second shelf in the cabinets. I watch in awe as she easily fetches bread pans or serving trays that have been stashed far above my head.

Other than the special order blue jeans, the only other trouble we encounter is when her dresses are deemed too short for the school dress code. Short girls could probably get away with it easier, but when your legs are as long as some people are tall, they tend to draw more attention.

There are really only two disadvantages to having a tall son. Size sixteen shoes are not readily available in stores, and cost a pretty penny online. Tall boys also need longer beds. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but I opted to wall off half of his bedroom and turn it into a laundry room. That didn’t leave much space for a big bed.

For the record, he still had the bed, just not much space to get around it. And it was only for a year or so until he went off to college where he now has a nice roomy apartment, paid for by yours truly.

The upside to having a tall boy in the family is that he knows exactly what his holiday duties are. He puts the angel on the tree, fetches the decorative drink dispensers out of the extremely high cabinet in the family room, cleans the ceiling fans, and changes out all the recessed light bulbs so they are bright and new during our parties and events. However, he is no longer allowed to entertain his younger siblings with piggy back rides since that unfortunate incident involving a doorframe and a trip to the ER.

One of my adult children ended up only being two inches taller than me, which is kind of nice because she also gets teased for having to stand on her tiptoes from time to time. We love our tall family though, and wouldn’t trade them for the world. Even though they’ve decided not to bring us fame and fortune by playing basketball.